


Requited and Unrequited

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Home and Away [5]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 17:40:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7232290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Stargate Atlantis, Evan Lorne/David Parrish, David finds Evan's sketchbook."</p><p>David has a crush on Lorne. He wonders if Lorne likes him back. The answer is in Lorne's sketchbook.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Requited and Unrequited

The thing about Atlantis was that it was in the Pegasus Galaxy. A whole other galaxy from Earth. David had seen more than his fair share of post-apocalyptic movies, nature disaster movies, and zombie movies. When people were removed from civilization, civilization was removed from people. In the movies that usually meant morally dubious antiheroes doing a lot more killing than David was otherwise comfortable with (but you had to protect yourself from the zombies, right?). In Atlantis, there was less morally dubious killing (as far as David was concerned, protecting himself from the Wraith was always the moral high ground), but civilization slipped away in other ways. Like...fraternization regs. David had it on good authority that Lieutenant Vega and Sergeant Markham had something pretty hot and heavy going on. Everyone knew Colonel Sheppard and Dr. McKay were a thing.

Once contact with Earth was re-established, David was worried that increased scrutiny from the SGC would ruin things, but instead Dr. Beckett started dating Lieutenant Cadman and Atlantis kept on doing what it wanted, saving the Pegasus Galaxy from the Wraith and not caring about regs or Anglo-American conservative sexual mores (especially since it was an international expedition, and everyone else was less repressed than the Americans, even Radek).

When David was assigned to Major Lorne’s gate team, he was nervous, because he’d never been on a gate team, and being on a gate team meant going running every day (because running from the Wraith was a vital survival skill), some time in the weight room regularly, and hanging around Lorne’s marines. Walker and Coughlin had come to Atlantis with something going on between them, which Stevens turned a blind eye to, but Reed had a girl back home, and he sent her daily emails and a weekly video message in the regular databursts. Walker and Coughlin had a running bet with some of the other marines about when Reed was going to get a Dear John, and the pool was growing, but Reed’s ardor showed no signs of cooling.

Major Lorne was - punctilious about his duties. No matter the time of day, he was perfectly turned out in his uniform, gear in working order, boots so shiny David could see his own reflection in them. Lorne was prone to sarcasm first, sensitivity second, but he kept David and the others safe, and that was what counted.

And then one day, while they were offworld on a planet for David to collect botany samples (Radek and McKay had sent him a description of a plant from the Ancient Database that might be a perfect coffee substitute that they could grow on their own and thus free up more space on the Daedalus for other vital supplies and also avoid ever being cut off from coffee again like they had near the end of that first year), Lorne and David had what David considered their first real conversation.

David had a camera to take photos of samples, but he was old-fashioned at heart, and he liked to draw plant diagrams so he could label them as he went. He had just flipped open his little sketchbook and fished his pack of colored pencils out of his pocket when Lorne said,

“Did you intend to use watercolor pencils?”

David blinked, looked down at the pack of pencils. “What?”

“Those are watercolor pencils,” Lorne said. “If you get them wet, it’ll look like a watercolor painting.”

David must have continued to look confused, because Lorne said, “I mean, if that’s what you intended, that’s great, but if that’s not what you intended and your sketchbook gets wet, all the colors will run and your diagrams will be ruined. You’ve got great cross-hatching technique, though.”

“Oh,” David said. “I - no. I’m not an artist. I just asked my sister to send me some sturdy colored pencils and this was what she chose.”

“I’ll trade you my standard colored pencils,” Lorne said. “Not that I get much use out of them these days, but they’ll be better for your work, and it’ll save me from asking my sister for watercolors on the next Daedalus run.”

“Okay. Thanks.” David peered at Lorne. “I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“Older,” Lorne said. “She has two kids. I’m an uncle,” he added proudly.

“My sister doesn’t have any kids yet.”

“I didn’t think she would, given how she’s still in high school.” Lorne cast a glance around the clearing, noted the positions of his marines.

“How’d you know she was in high school?”

“You talk about her sometimes.”

David did, but usually people didn’t listen. Or so he thought. After that, he started listening to Lorne more, and he and Lorne talked more, walked together in the hallways sometimes if they were headed in the same direction, or during team meals (Lorne insisted they have at least one breakfast, one lunch, one dinner together a week when they were on base).

Lorne was actually really, really nice. His sarcasm was never mean, always lighthearted. He paid attention to everything around him, which had always made David feel safe, but now he also felt cared-for, because Lorne knew about David and his sister and his parents. Knew about Reed’s girlfriend and Walker’s grandmother and Coughlin’s cousins. Knew how to get McKay to calm down when he was in a tizzy, knew who had the latest DVDs from home and what to trade so the team had new movies for Team Movie Night.

Lorne was also incredibly smart. He read all the time. He liked fantasy, which he admitted was a little silly, given that they were living on the Lost City of Atlantis (he’d reread the classical Greek text that was the original source of the myth on Earth), but he liked Merlin (who they knew was an Ancient) and magic and Narnia. He and David had endless conversations about the best fantasy books and movies and how it was generally disappointing how authors didn’t put nearly as much thought into the flora of their magical worlds. Video games and D&D, they agreed, had the most interesting plants, but as a general rule plants rarely figured into the ambience of fantasy worlds; cool plants only happened if they were a useful plot device.

Between hours of conversation, hours more offworld, and the multiple times Lorne and David saved each other’s lives, David might or might not have developed a bit of a crush on Lorne. He asked around the other scientists, but as far as they knew Lorne didn’t have anyone on Earth, and no one knew his orientation. Lorne knew pretty much everything that happened on Atlantis, was the hub through which every plan - official or illicit - passed. But no one knew much about him. Sure, David knew the basics - Lorne was from California, his mother was an art teacher and he’d learned to paint from her, he’d started off as a surveyor and XO on SG-11, he liked fantasy books and super spicy Korean food and his favorite band was the Red Hot Chili Peppers - but David didn’t know the things that mattered. Like whether Lorne could even possibly like him back.

So when Lorne accidentally left his sketchbook behind after another Team Movie Night (a remake of some classic Western movie), David knew he had an opportunity. He could take the sketchbook to Lorne’s quarters, have a legitimate excuse to talk to him alone and in private. If things went well, then he was at Lorne’s quarters and there might be fun sexy times behind a locked door. If things went badly, there would be no witnesses to David’s humiliation.

He took a deep breath and picked up the sketchbook.

It tumbled out of his shaking hands and fell to the floor, flopping open.

To a picture of David. Nothing scandalous, just a sketch of him crouched down...sketching a plant.

Well, if David was in the sketchbook, he had a right to know, right?

He scooped up the sketchbook, sat down on the couch, and flipped to the beginning. Given how Evan painted architecture and landscapes exclusively, David shouldn’t have been surprised to see a hundred and one studies of Atlantis and the ocean and the mainland and more than one alien planet, but it still took a while to find the people.

David himself. Lots of studies of him. But also of Stevens and Walker and Coughlin and Reed. Sheppard. McKay. Elizabeth. Radek, with wild hair and glasses sliding down his nose. Beckett studying a medical chart. Intermingled with the sketches were images of SG-1 and some people who were probably from the SGC who David had never known. Daniel Jackson wearing a bandanna. Sam Carter leaning over a microscope. Teal’c standing with his staff weapon. O’Neill.

David was heartened when he came across a number of sketches of himself wearing a tank top and his expedition tags (distinct from the military dog tags), sweaty and flushed from exertion, probably lifting weights if the studies of the lines of David’s arm muscles were any indication.

But in the corner of the page of studies of David was a profile he didn’t recognize, a boy, maybe sixteen or eighteen. One of the Athosian kids, maybe? There was a whole section of the sketchbook dedicated to Teyla and Ronon and Halling, Jinto and Wex. But as David rifled through the pages, he saw the boy over and over again. Different angles, different poses.

Something about the boy was familiar, and when David flipped backward through the book, he realized that random sketches of the boy were peppered throughout the drawings starting around the end of the second year in Atlantis. He’d been seeing the boy all along and hadn’t realized it.

Maybe he was Lorne’s nephew? No. Too old.

The boy was good-looking, with bright dark eyes and dark hair and a sweet smile.

There was a picture of him standing beside a fancy classic old car, and a cool old motorcycle.

And then one of him with his eyes closed and his head tipped back, lips parted, like he was anticipating a kiss.

And another of him sprawled out on a couch, hair mussed and shirt rucked up halfway and the look in his eyes one-hundred percent _come hither_.

And one of him wearing an SGC uniform, dressed like an Air Force officer.

Old enough to be in military service, then. David closed the sketchbook with shaking hands. Lorne had someone back on Earth after all.

He’d return the sketchbook in the morning.

Lorne looked ridiculously grateful (but not a bit guilty, even though his secret lover looked like a damn _kid_ ) when David gave the sketchbook back to him at breakfast, and he kept it with him throughout the rest of the day.

David was pretty sure he was the only one who saw Lorne scribble the words _holding on_ in the back of the filled sketchbook a few weeks later when everyone was gathered in the commissary to ship things back to Earth on the Daedalus. David was sure he was the only one who noticed the reverence with which Lorne accepted the new sketchbook that came for him on the Daedalus six weeks later.

David might have peeked at the epigraph in the front cover, because if his heart was broken, at least his curiosity could be satisfied.

 _Take me away_.

Lorne’s secret lover had school-teacher perfect cursive. Unusual in a boy that age.

Inside the back cover, Lorne’s lover had written, _Take me home._  



End file.
